CRIME: Pieces of stolen $250k car found in Vista warehouse

Investigators found the remains of a rare and pricey car ---- stolen recently from a Rancho Santa Fe home ---- stripped in a Vista warehouse, a San Diego police sergeant said Thursday.

All that was left of the 2005 Ford GT were "a few small pieces that were cut up into even smaller pieces," said Sgt. Jim Kistner of the department's Auto Theft Unit.

The car ----intact, anyway ---- was worth about $250,000, police said last week when they announced that they were looking for it.

When investigators found the car, the transmission, the frame and the supercharged engine were gone, Kistner said. The engine alone was worth $40,000, he said.

No one was arrested, the sergeant said.

Citing the still-active investigation, Kistner was vague on details, including exactly when and where the car was found. But he did say it was located in a Vista warehouse, and that investigators also found a stolen Porsche on the premises.

And, he said, investigators were following up on a separate stolen-car investigation when they found the GT pieces.

Authorities were equally mum on where and when the car was stolen.
Investigators have only said
the car was stolen from a Rancho Santa Fe home. It was last seen in mid-June, but discovered missing July 10, police Detective Timothy Coyle said last week.

Items taken from the home during the burglary were also found in the Vista warehouse, Kistner said.

The GT's 5.4-liter, eight-cylinder, 550-horsepower engine can take its driver from a dead stop to 60 mph in 3.7 seconds, according to auto magazine reviews. Floor it for another 3.7 seconds, and it will reach 100 mph.

Just 4,038 of the super-charged cars were built. So, is there a market for parts for a car so rare?

"There might be a market," Kistner said. "These cars get crashed quite frequently because they are so fast and so light. There is a demand for parts for this car."

He also said that it was possible that anyone who bought parts from the car might be "an innocent purchaser and didn't realize that these parts were stolen."